The End of the World

Is this that?

November 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment

by Michael Danner

Gospel Reading: Luke 21:25 – 36

For Sunday, December 2, 2012; Year C—Advent 1

This passage begins with apocalyptic thunder, as Jesus overwhelms his hearers with the unspeakable doom they are about to experience. The heavenly bodies will be shaken. People will freak out and faint with terror. They will be filled with anxiety about the future. The End is here!

Sandwich-Board Guy

I’ve never pictured Jesus as a sandwich-board wearing street preacher with a message of doom before, but it seems like “that guy” and Jesus have similar messages. And, let’s be honest, while we (or at least I) dismiss “sandwich-board guy who warns of impending doom,” that is the message that fuels the 24/7 cable news cycle—albeit in a more nuanced and sophisticated way. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Featured, Luke, New Testament, YearC Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Sweet Jesus, What have you Done?

February 6, 2012 By 6 Comments

Why did Jesus have to set our healing hopes so high?

by Michael Danner

Gospel Reading: Mark 1:40 – 45

For Sunday, Feb. 12, 2012; Year B—Epiphany 6

As a pastor, there is nothing more frustrating than Jesus, doing something or saying something, that offers people hope of healing.

I know, that doesn’t sound like a very pastoral thing to say, but often times that is how I feel. Where I feel this the most is Jesus’ encounter with a leper in Mark 1:40 – 45. It’s a simple, beautiful, story, as long as you don’t think about it too much.

Enter the Nameless Leper

There is a man with leprosy − a disease which is physically and socially debilitating. He sees Jesus and he kneels before him. Begging him, he says, “If you choose, you can make me clean.”

This leper represents me and every other leper I’ve ever met. By leper, I don’t mean people with actual leprosy. I mean everyone who is need of healing of any kind (which is pretty much all of us); everyone who is cut off from friends and family (which is most of us); everyone who sits outside of the community, apart from the life-giving sustenance that community provides (which is too many of us); and, everyone who, in the midst of their struggles, still has faith in Jesus (which is a growing minority of us).

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Featured, Mark, New Testament, YearB Tagged With: , , , , ,

Hoping and Seeing: There’s No Sibling Rivalry Here

July 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Why on earth do we think seeing hopes fulfilled would remove our hope?

by Danielle Shroyer

Epistle Reading: Romans 8:12-25

For Sunday, July 17, 2011: Year A—Ordinary 16

Oh, Paul. You do love run-on sentences, don’t you? They are so lovely in Greek, holding up that long line of endless-sentenced logical arguments stacking up like artfully poised Jenga pieces.

They are slightly less endearing, dare I say, in modern English. There are plenty of noteworthy bits in this chapter of Romans, with which many of us are overly familiar, but I’m just going to jump right to the end, right to my personal pet peeve, where we read this: “Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen?”

Well, Paul, I DO. I hope for what is seen ALL THE TIME.

Picking Sides?

I know this verse has gotten plenty of attention, because it’s a good rousing battle-cry when we find ourselves having to hope for something that’s nowhere in sight, and a long time coming. Like world peace. Or the Cubs winning the World Series. But I tend to feel it unfairly forces us to choose sides, as if hope and fulfillment are warring cousins, or rival siblings, requiring us to pick one over the other.

I’d argue, rather, that you can’t have one without the other. What kind of Easter would it have been without the women and disciples seeing the Risen Christ? We wouldn’t have resurrection hope at all if Jesus didn’t make himself seen and heard and poked and prodded and known over those next few days. And if Easter hope doesn’t count for Paul, how insane a definition of hope is that?!

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Featured, New Testament, Romans, YearA Tagged With: , , ,

A New Hope

March 20, 2011 By 7 Comments

Crying, waiting, hoping.

by Unvirtuous Abbey

 Gospel Reading: Romans 5: 1-11

For Sunday, Mar. 27, 2011: Year A – Lent 3

A friend of mine was recently “vague booking.” I called him and heard his relationship (or lack of relationship) woes. As we spoke, I asked him, “What gives you hope?”

His answer: “I’ll be in Mexico in two weeks.”

Now, that may not be what gives me, or you, hope, but for him, it was the first thing that came to his mind.

Seeing Hope

A few years ago, I worked with a group of people and asked them to submit pictures of what gave them hope. The project was this: “In our digital world, we are challenging you to record hopeful images in life. Where do you see hope in your daily life?”

I received over 100 images from people. Some were edgy, such as a sink in a soup kitchen. Others were of flowers growing through concrete. Some depicted wildlife and outdoor scenes. A young person submitted a group picture with her friends; their togetherness gave her hope. The project generated a lot of emotion.

Living for the Preposterous

Of hope, Cheryl Lawrie of the Uniting Church in Australia says this: “Hope, an encounter that captivates our imagination so we can’t help but become more than who we thought we were, and find ourselves living for something that is all at once preposterous and impossible.”

The recipe for hope, says Paul, is this: suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And hope does not disappoint us.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Featured, New Testament, Romans, YearA Tagged With: , , , , , ,

A Way Without Violence

December 5, 2010 By 3 Comments

Does redeeming the violence of God in the text take precedence over all other interpretive proclamation?

by Russell Rathbun

Old Testament Reading: Isaiah 35:1-10

For Sunday, Dec. 12, 2010: Year A – Advent 3

It has been about five years since I first felt the warm embrace of the Order of Girard, primarily in the arms of James Alison. I found freedom, nay, straight-out freakin’ joy in their insistence on God utterly without violence.

What I Don’t Want for Christmas

So, as I take up round three of my Advent Isaiah, in the midst of this beautiful poetry of hope, reconciliation and straight-out freakin’ joy, there are some snaggy, snarls that catch me up.

Say to those with a fearful heart, “Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you.”

I want to say to those with a fearful heart: “Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God.” I have a fearful heart; I really need to hear that, along with the proclamation of the Second Advent that there is a way through the wilderness. That the desert is flowing, blooming, prancing, with a wide straight road, on which no traveler, not even a fool could go astray. But that second part, about being saved by the vengeance and terrible recompense − that I don’t want for Christmas.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Featured, Isaiah, Old Testament, YearA Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

This Branch Is Slower than Christmas

November 28, 2010 By 15 Comments

Why is the stump of Jesse taking so long to fill the whole world with the knowledge of God?

by Danielle Shroyer

Old Testament Reading: Isaiah 11:1-10

For Sunday, December 5, 2010 Year A - Advent 2

Picture it: Sicily, 1928. (Golden Girls fans, you’re welcome.) Actually, the picture happened last year, at my son’s kindergarten Christmas program. There they all were, five- and six-year-olds, fidgeting on risers and fumbling with their little Christmas collars, big smiles on their faces and unashamed voices booming forth, singing, “You be the lion strong and wild, I’ll be the lamb, meek and mild; we’ll live together happily, ‘cause that’s how it ought to be.”

This passage from Isaiah has always been one of my favorites. It illustrates many of the deepest hopes I hold, the ones where our world will be filled not with pain and destruction but with righteousness and justice, that day when a little child shall lead us up to that holy mountain because we are ready, finally, to turn in our damaging ways for the way of the Lord.

Can we raise the banners yet?

At Advent, we Jesus-types declare our bold hopes for the world to the world. Go tell it on the mountain, we say, over the hills and everywhere! “Let earth receive her King!”, we sing.

Indeed, the first two stanzas of our Isaiah text leave us no reason to hold back our enthusiasm. In Advent we proclaim that Isaiah’s words have been made manifest through the Christ child, the branch growing forth from the tree of Jesse. And those of us who follow this Christ child affirm that yes, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding and the fear of the Lord rested upon his shoulders. We affirm that he has judged the poor with righteousness. We know all too well how, through those convicting parables, the words of his mouth have assailed us in all our shadowed places. We say all of this with holiday cheer and merriment, even, because we believe it’s the best thing — he’s the best thing — that has happened to us.

But then we get to the third stanza, the part about the lions and the lambs and the child-friendly snakes. There is a chasm the size of Texas between those two stanzas. There is a black hole of despair just waiting for us, daring us to try to make the jump. It’s all death eaters and dementors down there, sucking the life right out.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Featured, Isaiah, Old Testament, YearA Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Don’t Shoot the Messenger

October 4, 2010 By 2 Comments

What if you’re a prophet, but the message that God gives you to proclaim isn’t revolutionary?

By Tony Jones

Old Testament Reading: Jeremiah 29: 1-7

For Sunday, October 10, 2010 – Year C, Ordinary 28

Jeremiah seemed to generally have a pretty sour disposition, which I guess can be expected since over the course of his prophetic career he was attacked by his own brothers, beaten and put into the stocks by a priest and false prophet, imprisoned by the king, threatened with death, thrown into a cistern by Judah’s officials, and opposed by another false prophet. Why so much grief just for doing what he’d been told by God? Probably because God gave him such a difficult message.

Whose Address Is On that Letter?

Among other things, Jeremiah had to preside, in the Lord’s stead, over the expulsion of the Israelites from their Promised Land into Babylon. Although this happens because of the false worship of Israel, it’s not a message they want to hear.

We pick up the story in approximately 598 BCE. Most of Israel is in Babylon, and a couple of prophets named Hananiah and Shemaiah are telling the people that their exodus from the Babylonian Captivity is imminent. When the Babylonians had invaded Judah and carted off the Israelites, they hadn’t destroyed the Temple, so the Israelites were particularly receptive to Hananiah and Shemaiah’s message of hope.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Featured, Jeremiah, Old Testament, YearC Tagged With: , , , , ,

New from sparkhouse